Winning Bidder for Shredded Banksy Painting Says She’ll Keep It

Image

The tattered painting by Banksy has been recertified and renamed “Love Is in the Bin,” after it self destructed at a Sotheby’s auction last Friday. The winning bidder is sticking with her purchase.CreditCreditSotheby’s

By Scott Reyburn

Oct. 11, 2018

LONDON — The woman who placed the winning telephone bid at a London auction for Banksy’s painting “Girl With Balloon,” which was partially shredded by remote control moments after it sold for $1.4 million, is continuing with the purchase at the same price, Sotheby’s said in a statement Thursday.

“When the hammer came down last week and the work was shredded, I was at first shocked, but gradually I began to realize that I would end up with my own piece of art history,” the buyer, who was identified only as a “European collector and a longstanding client,” commented in the statement.

Joanna Brooks, the director of JBPR, who answers media enquiries for Banksy, said Sotheby’s had requested a new authentication of the piece, which passed halfway through a shredder concealed in the frame.

“It’s a different work now, so it needed a new title.” The shredded piece, titled “Love Is in the Bin,” has been granted another certificate by Pest Control, Banksy’s official authentication body. Neither Ms. Brooks nor Sotheby’s would confirm whether Banksy had been the seller of the painting.

Video

The enigmatic artist’s “Girl With Balloon” sold for $1.4 million before being shredded by a rigged frame at Sotheby’s auction house in London on Friday.CreditCreditvia Sotheby's

After the winning bid was declared for “Girl With Balloon” at Sotheby’s on Oct. 5, the painting, hanging on the wall next to auction house staff members, began to shred itself, to the surprise of onlookers. The shredding stopped about halfway down the canvas. (A photo posted on the private Instagram account of Caroline Lang, the chairwoman of Sotheby’s Switzerland, showed a man in the salesroom operating an electronic device hidden inside a bag.)

Dealers have speculated that this Banksy painting became more valuable after the artist’s intervention created a memorable moment. At least one prominent critic has hailed it as a “masterpiece of radical performance.”

“The urge to destroy is also a creative urge,” Banksy pronounced on his Instagram account, where he posted a video about how he had prepared the shredder hidden in the frame.

The self-destructing painting is “the first artwork in history to have been created live during an auction,” Alex Branczik, head of Sotheby’s Contemporary Art in Europe, said of the incident in the statement.

“Banksy didn’t destroy an art work in the auction, he created one,” Mr. Branczik added.

Since then, the stunt has also become a social media meme, as people have substituted other pieces of art (like the Mona Lisa), political imagery (the Constitution, a photo of Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh) and even advertisements (Ikea, McDonald’s) into the Banksy frame. (Here’s a do-it-yourself Banksy shredder.)

The real-life Banksy piece will be on view to the public at Sotheby’s in London on Saturday and Sunday.

A version of this article appears in print on , Section A, Page 10 of the New York edition with the headline: Winning Bidder Says She’ll Keep Shredded Painting. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe